Is CM dying?

[Steiner14]

Hi all,
ofcourse the question can easily be answered by long time players who grow older with CM.

But in all earnest: a company can not survive without many new, fresh customers. But when I visit the Battlefront forums, the Blitz or FGM, I don't see many new players. My impression is, the community is shrinking.

I recently checked the BFC-forum post numbers: CMx1 had MUCH more posts in the same time as CMx2 has.

Don't get me wrong: I really like CMx2, and IMO CMRT is the best of the series yet.
BUT: if I ask myself, from the point of a normal customer, who was not convinced yet, I don't see much improvement with RT.

Every ittle improvement of the engine seems to take ages.

They make water effects - and then these effects are visible to both sides and have no FOW.

They make tank-riders (how many YEARS took that?) and they stick on the tank until the last man has been shot to pieces.

They made it possible, that the user assigns number keys for certain units, to navigate more quickly - a great idea - but this assignment is not saved with the turnfile. Absolutely useless for WEGOers.

And that brings up another point: how was the realtime-play hailed? Now, how many realtime-fans are left? BFC itself is increasing the map sizes. Not possible to play large battles in realtime.
Where are the masses, that play CMx2 realtime? Where are the realtime-ladders? It seems that the developer was not playing the game the way, which the vast majority of the wargamers plays that game: WEGO. And if I think back, how less love did WEGO receive from the developers with the first CMSF release? Steve spammed the forums that was the mode how CMx2 should be played now. Realtime had so many advantages over WEGO. He has become quite silent about it over the years.

Or take another example: the game is difficult for newbies and has a steep learning curve. Ok, nothing a complex software can be blamed for. But they are not capable to implement some kind of interactive feedback for years?
The after action report: scenario designers either spoil info on historic battles prior, or no info at all. No text after the battle.

There are so many areas that could be improved to make the entry for NEW players more pleasant, to make the game more attractive, but they are deaf. Or incompetent.

Has anyone tried the new mouse controls yet? They are more or less useless.

Or lets take the cover arcs. In CMx1 only the borders were drawn. In CMx2 the whole area is colored which looks UGLY as hell, when you watch the replay and have the unit selected.
And where is the key modifier for half circles after so many years?
Another example, how the developer ignores the needs for the WEGO players.
Where is the possibity to click paths to select a unit? A must have. Not possible after so many years.

Full battle replay?
Multi-multiplayer? Or at least 2-vs-2? Not even for WEGO PBEM!
A scaleable interface? Or at least two sizes?
Campaigns that carry over the destructions on the map?
At least a few seconds replay for trealtime players? How incompetent must a designer be, to develop a new game engine based on realtime, but it's not capable to offer a replay possibility of at least a few seconds, ALTHOUGH the huge success of CMx1 was BECAUSE of the watching the action? How many of us WEGOers enjoy the replays like movies?

Or that they developed CMx2 WITHOUT moveable waypoints? Took them years to correct that.

I have the impression, they throw out title after title, lots of content, but the engine development lacks. Quantity over quality.

Does anyone remember the disaster with the hailed relative command keys? And making that even the STANDARD mode?

While writing this rant I have been asking myself, what is the real benefit of CMRT? And the ONLY thing that really stands out as big improvement is AI-triggers. In one year of development time of the engine?
Everything else IMO are minor improvements, for new customers probably not even worth to mention.
The Eastern front itself is fantastic, but it's only the content.

Has anyone recognized, that there was a significant number of customers being blocked because of their incredible security system? Many years ago I had the same problem - they just blocked the whole provider.
And how do they react? Change the provider! I had heard this five years ago already.

I have NEVER experienced any problems with another online shop, being blocked as customer, because of a crappy and incompetent security system. And that persists for years?


Or how do they care about the community? Their "repository" page is a bad joke. Remember the difference when "Madmatt" cared for the community?
If you search certain mods, all games are preselected! And this for years! And they do not allow mods bigger than IIRC 75 MB!
"Green As Jade" carries this traffic load with his private depot-webpage anyway... This fact alone makes me angry. It's shameless.

And last but not least the BFC-forum. It has turned into a strange kind of incestuous self declared "experts" forum, disgustingly politically "correct", extreme leftist like the US mainstream media, not at all refelcting the plurality of the wargamer community and in combination with beta-testers that defend every shortcoming in the worst fanboy mindset, is a place only to visit only to know what is going on around the game, but to avoid to participate in.

The beta-testers: am I the only one wiht the impression that the majority of active forum members are beta testers? That's another example how they use the community to throw out content after content, instead to improve the game engine substantially, while they turn beta testers into fanboys.
And their forum is the most active that even exists! All the national forums, that existed in CMx1 times: long gone.
I have the impression, despite the huge amount of content they throw out, the CM-community is shrinking.

They promised a faster development with the new model. But I don't see a fast development of the engine. It's slow as a slug. But content is thrown out faster than one can play.
And I don't see, with such a development pace, how they would attract MORE customers. I believe the amount of customers, since now the Eastern Front is there and attracted a big segment, because it was not covered yet, will dramatically shrink for future releases, IF they keep this development pace.
For example I don't know, if I would buy the Ardennenoffensive-family. Because the minor engine improvements become available for older titles anyway.
I also don't play CM because of a maximum amount of houses or units to play with. I play it because of quality over quantity. And if the engine does not improve substantially, I see no reason anymore to buy every title.

What do you think about it?